“Your straight meaning, squire? We want to understand thee.”
“Well and good! I mean this--You hev allays been ‘slow and sure’; in the new times just here, you’ll hev to be ‘up and doing,’ for you will find it a big hurry-push to keep step with your new work-fellows, steam and machinery.”
“That is more than a man can do, squire.”
“No, it is not! A man can do anything he thinks it worth his while to do.”
“The _London Times_, sir, said yesterday that it would take all of another generation.”
“It will do nothing of the kind, Sam Yates. What-iver has thou to do with the newspapers? Newspapers! Don’t thee mind them! Their advice is meant to be read, not taken.”
“To be sure, labor also hes its duties. It isn’t much we hear about the latter.”
“Rights and duties, squire. The Reform Bill happens to be both. When is The Bill to be settled?”
“Nothing is settled, Sam, until it is settled right.”
“Lord Brougham, in a speech at Manchester, told us he would see it settled this session.”
“Lord Brougham thinks in impossibilities. He would make a contract with Parliament to govern England, or even Ireland. Let me tell thee all government is a thing of necessity, not of choice. England will not for any Bill dig under her foundations. Like Time, she destroys even great wrongs slowly. Her improvements hev to grow and sometimes they take a good while about it. You hev been crying for this Bill for forty years, you were not ready for it then. Few of you at that time hed any education. Now, many of your men can read and a lesser number write. Such men as Grey, Russell, Brougham and others hev led and taught you, and there’s no denying that you hev been varry apt scholars. Take your improvements easily, Sam. You won’t make any real progress by going over precipices.”
“Well, sir, we at least hev truth on our side.”
“Truth can only be on one side, Sam, I’m well pleased if you hev it.”
“All right, squire, but I can tell you this--if Parliament doesn’t help us varry soon now we will help oursens.”
“That is what you ought to be doing right now. Get agate, men! Go to your new loom, and make yersens masters of it. I will promise you in that case, that your new life will be, on the whole, better than the old one. As for going back to the old life, you can’t do it. Not for your immortal souls! Time never runs back to fetch any age of gold; and as for making a living in the old way and with the old hand loom, you may as well sow corn in the sea, and hope to reap it.”